Epicurus is one of the first social contract theorists, holding that justice is an agreement neither to harm nor be harmed. He also says that living justly is necessary and sufficient for living pleasantly, which is the Epicurean goal. Some say that there are two accounts of justice in Epicurus -- one as a personal virtue, the other as a virtue of institutions. I argue that the personal virtue derives from compliance with just social institutions, and so we need to (...) attribute only one account of justice to Epicurus. I show how this interpretation makes sense of claims about justice by Epicurus and his followers, including Hermarchus, Lucretius, and Diogenes of Oinoanda. (shrink)

An argument for the existence of gods given by the Stoic Diogenes of Babylon and reported by Sextus Empiricus appears to be an ancient version of the ontological argument. In this paper I present a new reconstruction of Diogenes' argument that differs in certain important respects from the reconstruction presented by Jacques Brunschwig. I argue that my reconstruction makes better sense of how Diogenes' argument emerged as a response to an attack on an earlier Stoic argument presented (...) by Zeno of Citium. Diogenes' argument as reconstructed here is an example of a modal ontological argument that makes use of the concept of being of such a nature as to exist. I argue that this concept is a modal concept that is based on the Philonian definition of possibility, and thus that Diogenes' argument is a source of important evidence about the use of non-Stoic modalities in the post-Chrysippean Stoa. I conclude by arguing that the objections made against considering Diogenes' argument as ontological are unfounded and that Diogenes' argument clearly resembles modern versions of modal ontological arguments. (shrink)

In fr. 69 Smith, the Epicurean Diogenes of Oinoanda, like Lucretius 4.353–63, explains why a square tower viewed from the distance appears to be round. The explanation is that εἲδωλα, filmy atomic images, emanating from the tower, are forced out of shape by the air through which they pass on their way to our eyes. Diogenes’ account is fragmentarily preserved on a stone which I discovered in 1970. The stone bears the right half of one fourteen-line column and (...) the left half of a second one. I first published the text in 1971. When, twenty years later, I came to deal with it again, in preparing an edition of all the known fragments, I was able, thanks in no small measure to the discussions and suggestions of other scholars, whose names can be seen in my apparatus criticus, to print a text which represents a considerable advance on that of the editio princeps. However, with so much of what Diogenes wrote missing, there has remained scope for further progress, and in this note I correct an error—an error present not only in my text, but also on the stone itself. (shrink)

One of the best-known bits—perhaps the best-known bit—of the inscription of Diogenes of Oinoanda is frs. 2–3, in which the author explains what motivated him to display Epicurean doctrines in epigraphical form.

The 166th codex of the Bibliotheke of Photios comprises a summary of a peculiar work written by one Antonius Diogenes, entitled τ πρ Θούλην πιστα. This told the story of an Arkadian named Deinias, who travelled the world κατ ζήτησιν στορίας , coming eventually to Thule, where he met Mantinias and Derkyllis, a brother and sister from Tyre, and struck up an erotic relationship with Derkyllis . A narrative of Derkyllis, told to Deinias, seems to be inset at this (...) point , relating her own travels and including much Pythagorean material associated with her wonder-working companion, Astraios, which was authentic-seeming enough for Porphyrios to make use of it in his biography of Pythagoras. The Apista was a long work, running to 24 books, and it seems likely that a sizeable proportion of its length was devoted to paradoxographical material related to the places and peoples visited by the various narrators, but largely omitted from Photios' summary; the plot itself, though both complex and episodic, does not seem capable of sustaining such length. At the end of his summary Photios has a short discussion of the place of the Apista in literary history . Detailed analysis of this passage will form an important part of this paper, but for the moment it will suffice to say that Photios saw the work as germinal for Greek fiction, and in particular expresses the view that it was the ‘source and root’ of Lucian's True Histories. (shrink)